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Expertise: Beginner

Oct 26, 1999

When trying to navigate through a complex class hierarchy from any given instance of an object, it's useful to be able to reference its parent. But how do you clean up any circular references when terminating the objects? Here is a simple way to retrieve a parent object using the undocumented ObjPtr function in VB:

 
' Code for clsChild Class
Option Explicit

Private Declare Sub CopyMemory Lib "kernel32" _
	Alias "RtlMoveMemory" (dest As Any, source _
	As Any, ByVal numBytes As Long)

Private lngParent As Long

Property Set Parent(Frm As Form)
	' obtain a pointer to the object
	lngParent = ObjPtr(Frm)
End Property

Property Get Parent() As Form
	Dim frmobj As Form
	CopyMemory frmobj, lngParent, 4
	Set Parent = frmobj
	CopyMemory frmobj, 0&, 4
End Property

To test the object's new Parent property, create a new form and add a button called cmdTest. Place this code in the button's Click event:

 
Option Explicit

Private Sub cmdTest_Click()
	Dim loChild As New clsChild
	With loChild
		Set .Parent = Me
		MsgBox  .Parent.Caption
	End With
End Sub

Because the child class only contains the pointer to the parent's memory, there are no circular references to resolve.